Friday, December 16, 2016

Wonderful and Terrifying

"December Dusk"

- fiercely beautiful -

A few days ago I was sitting alone inside my house at dusk, just
as the sun was setting in the desert skies. All of a sudden the entire house became
illuminated, radiant with shades of pink and gold. I panicked at first: “Did
some some sort of cataclysmic event occur or maybe I was having a stroke?" I rushed outside and noticed that the rays of
the setting sun had caught the gathering December clouds in such a way as to flood
the entire desert in bold shades of gold and pink and deep dark blue. It was such
a stunningly beautiful experience and it was also fierce and quite terrifying.

Back about 100 years ago, Rudolph Otto, the renowned
philosopher of religion, wrote his now-famous book: The Idea of the Holy, in which he talked at length about the human
experience of ‘transcendence.” When
we encounter “transcendence” we are
pulled out of our own limited, individualized ego and we are connected with something
(or someone) far greater than our tiny, little, separated self. Otto suggested that
this encounter cannot be rationalized or explained or even named and the only
response to such an experience is “awe.”

In our own day and age the word “awe” is used often and it
is usually quite trivialized -people talk abut how “awesome” their new iPhone
app is or how “awesome” that that their
team won the game; but in a spiritual context, “awe” means something far different
than this popular cultural usage.

Otto suggested that our “awesome” response to transcendence
is an experience that is “wonderful and terrifying” both at the same time:

An encounter with the “holy” elicits
awe,

an experience of an intimate and
also a majestic beauty

that is so intense as to leave you speechless
and makes you want to tremble.

As I think about it, that’s exactly how I was feeling as the
gold-pink rays of a December dusk flooded the entire desert the other day. I
was being pulled out of my tiny, myopic self and connected to something far more
cosmic and it elicited a sense of “awe” in me. It was all so beautifully tender
and also so majestic and incomprehensible. It left me speechless and it also terrified
me.

Nowadays, people talk a lot about a “spiritual journey” with
the idea that a spiritual experience should somehow leave one feeling assured and
comforted, like sitting in a warm jacuzzi or drinking "chicken soup for the
soul.” But as I see it, the spiritual experience is an experience of
transcendence and whenever any of us encounters transcendence we are filled with an "awe" that goes way beyond feeling contented - it is wonderful and and it is also
terrifying.

In order to encounter transcendence we have to
die to who we were so that we can be born to something far greater, so of course
that’s fierce and terrifying – death to an old life and birth into new life is
always a scary proposition.

The Buddha once described something of his own “enlightenment”
and his encounter with transcendence:

I saw stars within me, sunrise
and sunset, full moon nights

everything within me not without
me.

It was my boundary that had been
keeping them out,

Now the boundary is no more.

Now I am the whole.

I think that maybe that this is how I was feeling the other
day as I stood in the glowing rays of those fiercely beautiful December skies. For
just a brief moment there were no boundaries and I was whole - it was wonderful,
it was terrifying, it was awesome.

You don’t have to live in a desert to encounter transcendence. It is available to each
and every one of us all the time. But you have to watch and wait for it with an
open heart and an uncluttered mind and you have to be willing to die.

About Me

I am a teacher, a writer, and a spiritual guide. I am an ordained Episcopal Priest and hold degrees in theology, philosophy, and communication. I am particularly interested in the common spiritual insights which the many various world religions share with one another.

My wife and I live in the beautiful desert in the Coachella Valley of Southern California.